Parachute Women

April 17, 2023
Poet Winder (Marilyn in Manhattan) paints a fascinating portrait of Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, and Anita Pallenberg (1942–2017), four women who styled, wrote lyrics for, and in equal measure enraptured and enraged the Rolling Stones. Actors, models, and artists in their own right, the women helped catapult the British lads into the spotlight, styling them from their own wardrobes and introducing them to film directors, acclaimed writers, and high-society elites. But they also became targets for the band members’ frustrations and insecurities, including how Pallenberg’s relationship with Brian Jones—and its media attention—stirred up jealousy in Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, with whom she went on to have a 13-year relationship. Winder traces how the band shot to popularity even as the women’s public images nose-dived, as when a drug raid at Richards’s house found Faithfull, the only woman with the band at the time, naked under a bearskin rug: “Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll became an icon, and Marianne became... a symbol for the general moral degeneracy.” Winder’s renderings of fiery, messy love affairs, bonds and betrayals, and vicious rivalry are backed up by keenly described historical background and an expert understanding of 1960s and ’70s rock culture. The result is a wild ride worthy of rock’s heyday.

May 15, 2023
A vivid portrait of the women behind "the world's first rock stars." The Rolling Stones have made an incredibly long career out of singing about women. Think of all the honky-tonk denizens, ingenues out of the West End, tent-show queens, and consorts of stars who inhabit their lyrics, and it becomes clear that objectifying and mythologizing women have been major parts of their stock in trade. Winder, a biographer of Marilyn Monroe and Sylvia Plath, refreshingly turns the tables by writing about several women who were critical in various ways in shaping the Stones but whose contributions were "devoured, processed, spat out, and commodified by the relentlessly male music industry." At the center of Winder's narrative is the German Italian model and actor Anita Pallenberg, who, having formed a sort of androgynous duo with ill-fated band founder Brian Jones, turned him from a country lout into an Edwardian dandy, one of the first great evolutions of the Stones into style mavens. When Jones' sad time was done, it was Keith Richards' turn, and if anyone could out-Keith him, it was her--so much so that he had to leave her to break his heroin addiction. "Only a fool would call Anita Pallenberg a muse," writes Winder. "She was a force of nature, and rapidly becoming the central axis of the Stones." Meanwhile, Mick Jagger's former lover Marianne Faithfull, who was quite capable of writing her own songs ("Sister Morphine"), fell under his...well, Winder uses thumb a couple of times too many, but the pun is apposite. Winder's treatment is both deeply researched and endlessly dishy, especially when it comes to Jagger, who has become "a conservative Englishman," emotionally unavailable, for whom social climber seems far too mild a term. Gossipy, entertaining, and quite right in insisting on the central role of women in making an iconic band iconic.

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June 1, 2023
Winder (Marilyn in Manhattan, 2017) begins her fascinating, multifaceted portrait by listing the three traditional roles for women in rock culture: long-suffering wives and girlfriends, groupies, and bad girls. The latter (she cites Yoko Ono and Courtney Love as prime examples) are usually condemned as "unruly muses" and "gold diggers" and are typically blamed for breaking up bands. Parachute Women, the title, is from the Stones' arguably sexist song on their classic 1968 album, Beggars Banquet, about four ""bad girls""--Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, and Anita Pallenberg--who became famous for their association with the "baddest" of rock bands, the Rolling Stones, even though they always had their own stories to tell. Winder declares it was this quartet of "remarkable women" who introduced the bad boys of rock to alternative lifestyles and turned them on to occult practices, LSD, and high society. Winder questions the sexist dichotomy of the era by insisting it was the Stones who wanted to domesticate the women, not the other way around. A refreshing portrait of four women who dared to be themselves in the hypermasculine world of rock.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 1, 2023

Winder (Marilyn in Manhattan) offers a look into the tumultuous rise of the Rolling Stones from the perspective of the women who compelled them to become the rock icons they are today. Anita Pallenberg, Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, and Bianca Jagger opened the doors for the Stones to explore what the author calls "subterranean art and alternative lifestyles." In helping to create the aggressively masculine world of rock, however, these women found themselves demonized and written out of its history. Winder reclaims their narratives by exploring the careers and lives these influential women had outside of the Stones. She pairs extensive research with passages of conversational and creative nonfiction that make the book read like a novel. The author doesn't shy away from showing the harsh realities of life in the limelight as tabloids slander these women. Readers will likely come away from this book with a newfound appreciation for these women and their unsung contributions to creating the cultural phenomenon that is the Rolling Stones. VERDICT This feminist look at the history of the women of the Rolling Stones would make an excellent addition to collections looking to round out its offerings on rock and women's history.--Ashlynne Watson

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